1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for producing a laminated body, and more particularly to an improvement of the apparatus for producing a laminated body including a film substrate and at least one vapor-deposited polymer film deposited on the film substrate by a vacuum deposition polymerization.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Conventionally, the laminated body including a film substrate such as a resin film and a vapor-deposited polymer film formed on the film substrate by a vacuum deposition polymerization is used for various purposes. For example, the laminated body is used as a gas barrier film for preventing a permeation of oxygen gas or water vapor, or as an organic electroluminescence cell. Further, these days, it is considered that a stacked film including a metallized film and a vapor-deposited polymer film on the metallized film is used as a film capacitor element.
As an apparatus for producing such a laminated body, there are various kinds of apparatus, and one example thereof is shown in JP-A-2001-261867, for example. The apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2001-261867 includes, in a vacuum chamber thereof, a rotary drum (referred to as a cooling and coating roller therein), a feeding roller that supplies a film substrate (referred to as a substrate film therein) onto an outer peripheral surface of the rotary drum, and a pair of evaporation sources each heating and evaporating a different kind of material monomer. The apparatus is arranged to form a vapor-deposited polymer film on the film substrate by evaporating material monomers using two evaporation sources and polymerizing the two kinds of vapor monomer on the film substrate, while the film substrate unwound from the feeding roller and sent to the outer peripheral surface of the rotary drum is traveled in a circumferential direction of the rotary drum along with the rotation of the rotary drum. Such an apparatus for producing a laminated body allows the intended laminated body to be mass-produced in a continuous process.
However, in the above-described conventional apparatus, the entire of the vacuum chamber constitutes a deposition chamber. Further, only a pair of evaporation sources each containing different kind of material monomer is provided in the vacuum chamber, and two kinds of monomer vapor are supplied on the film substrate only by the pair of evaporation sources. Thus, change in pressure in the vacuum chamber (change in vacuum degree) and change in the evaporation rate of the material monomer (vapor pressure of the monomer vapor) caused by changes in the amount of material monomer remaining in the respective evaporation sources and heating temperature directly affect the composition and deposition rate of the vapor-deposited polymer film (formation rate of the vapor-deposited polymer film). As a result, the laminated bodies to be produced may have the vapor-deposited polymer films that have varied compositions and varied thickness.
In the formation of a thick vapor-deposited polymer film on the film substrate by using the conventional apparatus, the evaporation rate of the material monomer in each of the evaporation sources needs to be increased. However, in such a case, the heating temperature of the material monomer in the evaporation source is difficult to be controlled. Further, as the vapor pressure of the monomer vapor becomes high, the pressure resistance of the components of the evaporation source needs to be increased, leading to a problem of increased cost.
Further, when plural kinds of the vapor-deposited polymer film are formed on the film substrate by the above-described conventional apparatus, the vapor deposition polymerization operations need to be repeated in the same number as the number of kind of the vapor-deposited polymerization film, which is very troublesome.
JP-A-2008-287996 discloses an apparatus for producing a laminated body, which includes two sets of evaporation sources each containing a different kind of material monomers. However, the apparatus may have difficulty in maintaining a desired vapor pressure of each of monomer vapors generated by the two sets of the evaporation sources, due to the mutual interference between the two sets of the evaporation sources.